{"id":12719,"date":"2026-04-06T21:46:00","date_gmt":"2026-04-07T01:46:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/parmaks.com\/Resources\/neuroscience-founding-father-santiago-ramon-y-cajal-on-the-six-psychological-flaws-that-keep-the-gifted-from-living-up-to-their-gift-the-marginalian\/"},"modified":"2026-04-06T21:46:00","modified_gmt":"2026-04-07T01:46:00","slug":"neuroscience-founding-father-santiago-ramon-y-cajal-on-the-six-psychological-flaws-that-keep-the-gifted-from-living-up-to-their-gift-the-marginalian","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/parmaks.com\/Resources\/neuroscience-founding-father-santiago-ramon-y-cajal-on-the-six-psychological-flaws-that-keep-the-gifted-from-living-up-to-their-gift-the-marginalian\/","title":{"rendered":"Neuroscience Founding Father Santiago Ram\u00f3n y Cajal on the Six Psychological Flaws That Keep the Gifted from Living Up to Their Gift \u2013 The Marginalian"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Profit<\/a>
\n<\/p>\n

\n

\"Diseases<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cPrinciples are good and worth the effort only when they develop into deeds,\u201d<\/em> Van Gogh wrote to his brother in a beautiful letter about talking vs. doing and the human pursuit of greatness<\/a>. \u201cThe great doesn\u2019t happen through impulse alone, and is a succession of little things that are brought together.\u201d<\/em> But what stands between the impulse for greatness and the doing of the \u201clittle things\u201d out of which success is woven?<\/p>\n

That\u2019s what neuroscience founding father Santiago Ram\u00f3n y Cajal<\/strong> (May 1, 1852\u2013October 17, 1934) addresses in his 1897 book Advice for a Young Investigator<\/em><\/strong><\/a> (public library<\/em><\/a>) \u2014 the science counterpart to Rilke\u2019s Letters to a Young Poet<\/em><\/a> and Anna Deavere Smith\u2019s Letters to a Young Artist<\/em><\/a>, predating one by nearly a decade and the other by more than a century. <\/p>\n

Although Cajal\u2019s counsel is aimed at young scientists, it is replete with wisdom that applies as much to science as it does to any other intellectually and creatively ambitious endeavor \u2014 nowhere more so than in one of the pieces in the volume, titled \u201cDiseases of the Will,\u201d<\/strong> presenting a taxonomy of the \u201cethical weaknesses and intellectual poverty\u201d that keep even the most gifted young people from ascending to greatness.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
Self-portrait by Cajal at his library in his thirties, from Beautiful Brain: The Drawings of Santiago Ram\u00f3n y Cajal<\/em><\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

It should be noted that Cajal addresses his advice to young men, on the presumption that scientists are male \u2014 proof that even the most visionary geniuses are still products of their time and place, and can\u2019t fully escape the limitations and biases of their respective era, or as Virginia Woolf memorably put it in Orlando<\/em><\/a>, \u201cIt is probable that the human spirit has its place in time assigned to it.\u201d (Lest we forget, although the word \u201cscientist\u201d had been coined for a woman<\/a> half a century earlier, women were not yet able to vote and were decades away from being admitted into European universities<\/a>, so scientists in the strict academic sense were indeed exclusively male in Cajal\u2019s culture.) Still, when stripped of its genderedness, his advice remains immensely psychologically insightful, offering a timeless corrective for the pitfalls that keep talent and drive from manifesting into greatness, not only in science but in any field. <\/p>\n

Considering the all too pervasive paradox of creative people \u201cwho are wonderfully talented and full of energy and initiative [but] who never produce any original work and almost never write anything,\u201d Cajal divides them into six classes according to the \u201cdiseases of the will\u201d afflicting them \u2014 contemplators<\/em>, bibliophiles and polyglots<\/em>, megalomaniacs<\/em>, instrument addicts<\/em>, misfits<\/em>, and theorists<\/em>. <\/p>\n

He examines the superficiality driving the \u201cparticularly morbid variety\u201d of the first type:<\/p>\n

\n

[Contemplators] love the study of nature but only for its aesthetic qualities \u2014 the sublime spectacles, the beautiful forms, the splendid colors, and the graceful structures.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\"\"<\/a>
One of Cajal\u2019s revolutionary histological drawings<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

With an eye to his own chosen field of histology, which he revolutionized by using beauty to illuminate the workings of the brain<\/a>, Cajal notes that a contemplator will master the finest artistic techniques \u201cwithout ever feeling the slightest temptation to apply them to a new problem, or to the solution of a hotly contested issue.\u201d He adds:<\/p>\n

\n

[Contemplators] are as likable for their juvenile enthusiasm and piquant and winning speech as they are ineffective in making any real scientific progress.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

More than a century before Tom Wolfe\u2019s admonition against the rise of the pseudo-intellectual<\/a>, Cajal treats with special disdain the bibliophiles and polyglots<\/em> \u2014 those who use erudition not as a tool of furthering humanity\u2019s enlightenment but as a personal intellectual ornament of pretension and vanity. He diagnoses this particular \u201cdisease of the will\u201d:<\/p>\n

\n

The symptoms of this disease include encyclopedic tendencies; the mastery of numerous languages, some totally useless; exclusive subscription to highly specialized journals; the acquisition of all the latest books to appear in the bookseller\u2019s showcases; assiduous reading of everything that is important to know, especially when it interests very few; unconquerable laziness where writing is concerned; and an aversion to the seminar and laboratory.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n